Be on the lookout for Naruto at April's Paris Marathon. CyberConnect2 CEO Hiroshi Matsuyama and his staff will be running the full 26 mile marathon to celebrate the Naruto franchise's recent 10 million shipped feat. Matsuyama will go the extra mile and cosplay as Naruto.

Namco Bandai's announcement of the promotion included this pic of cosplaying Matsuyama.

This promotion is separate from the world tour that Namco Bandai will hold for the Naruto series starting in February. As reported yesterday, the world tour will include tournaments and developer talk events. Details will be announced at the Naruto portal site later.

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Sometimes, mere words cannot describe the sheer audacity with which China liberally takes concepts from Japanese anime and mutates them together, oftentimes making direct copies of other series, or worse yet making the end result super creepy.

The latest in such Chinese efforts is XiYouJi, which takes elements from Gundam SEED and Evangelion to make....well see for yourself below (or start at 2:28 for maximum brain damage).

The Chinese service Xu You Ji lets parents pay to have their children turned into 3D models and animated in their own CG action-adventure shorts. The children also dub their own voices into the work. The custom video service debuted in 2009, but recently garnered attention because of one of its videos, featuring Gundam models and other anime elements, was posted online this week.

The company's FAQ page claims the following regarding copyrights:

"We design and develop our own animation with their own copyrights. They do contain elements of popular titles, but all are adapted ourselves so there is no copyright concerns."

“I’m retiring,” Lucas said. “I’m moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff.”

He was careful to leave himself an out clause for a fifth “Indiana Jones” film. But otherwise, “Red Tails” will be the last blockbuster Lucas makes. “Once this is finished, he’s done everything he’s ever wanted to do,” says Rick McCallum, who has been producing Lucas’s films for more than 20 years. “He will have completed his task as a man and a filmmaker.”

The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Café opened at Tokyo's Tea Room 2525 on Saturday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Yoshiki Tanaka's space opera novels. The café is now serving Yang's tea, Frederica's crêpe, and Alliance pancakes (with the Alliance's symbol on top in powdered sugar) for 600 yen (about US$7.80) each.

Just for the sake of trivia, because it's nice to see the guy acknowledge his own roots and do non-Eva stuff.

Hideaki Anno Storyboards Yamato 2199's Opening

The official Yamato Crew membership website announced on Wednesday that Evangelion director Hideaki Anno is storyboarding the opening for the Space Battleship Yamato 2199project. Anno remarked, "If there was no Yamato, I would not be me now."